8.12.- 29.01.2006
Charles Sandison
"The Blind Watchmaker and Other Stories"
Solo exhibition at Arndt & Partner, Zurich

PRESS RELEASE
The installations created by the Scottish artist Charles Sandison immerse the beholder into a fascinating synthetic world made up of projected words and signs floating across the room. In the dark, they silently wander across the architecture and the beholder as shining dots of light, sometimes in a hurry, sometimes at a slow pace, sometimes isolated and then, again, in dense swarms. At first sight, the caleidoscopic movements of the light signs seem to be arbitrary. After some time, however, they either densify to form figurative silhouettes embedded in a sort of narration apparently inspired by the Poésie Concrète, or they reveal a choreography that reminds of biological or civilizational systems being translated into a digital simulation.
The title of Charles Sandison's first solo exhibition at Arndt & Partner, Zurich, was borrowed from the computer program "The Blind Watchmaker" that was developed by the biologist Richard Dawkins in 1986. This program has been used by Dawkins as a model to illustrate his Darwinistic theory of evolution. It simulates the complex mechanisms of selection and adaptation biological forms of life are going through. Fascinated with such simulations, Charles Sandison defines the laws governing the behavior of his shining signs in computer programs that he compiles for each of his works individually. He reserves some potential for changes and deviations that are based on coincidence and generated by the program itself. This is how he enables the choreographies of his works - in contrast to looping video projections - to be continually modified in a partly aleatory, partly determined manner.
His ephemeral light projections, that might well be read metaphorically as well, enable Charles Sandison to successfully reconcile opposites such as poetry and codification, the organic and the digital, or the reading of text versus the experience of physical space.
Charles Sandison (born 1969 in Scotland) lives in Tampere, Finland. His works were presented in the following solo exhibitions, among others: Yvon Lambert, New York (2005), Wäinö Aaltonen Museum, Turku, Finland (2004), The Lisson Gallery, London (2004), Centre d'Art Contemporaine Georges Pompidou, Cajarc, France (2003), and the Galerie Frank, Paris (2003). Furthermore, Sandison took part in numerous group exhibitions held, among others, at the Kunstmuseum Luzern and the Kunsthalle Lophem, Loppem-Zedelgem, Belgium (both in 2005), the ZKM-Zentrum fur Kunst und Medien in Karlsruhe, Germany, at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (all of these three in 2004), the Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany (2003), and the 49th Venice Biennial (2001).